Portland State Vanguard Volume 77 Issue 22

ABOUT

established in 1946, is published

as an independent student newspaper governed by the PSU Student Media Board. Views and

content

are those of the staff, contributors and readers and do not necessarily represent the PSU student body, faculty, staff or administration. Find us in print Wednesdays and online 24/7 at psuvanguard.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @psuvanguard for multimedia content and breaking news.

TANNER TODD

After a month-long hiatus from publishing, the Portland State Vanguard is back—with an update! We will be reviving our “Letters to the Editor,” a recurring Opinion feature that publishes and spotlights voices from around PSU, as well as the larger community of Portland, Oregon. This is a section devoted to spotlighting the opinions and feelings of our readsers, rather than the writers and contributors in our newsroom, and we welcome submissions from anyone. We’re particularly interested in perspectives related to current Portland events and community issues, as well as circumstances that impact the Pacific Northwest overall. We’d also love to hear your thoughts on stories we’ve covered—if you have a strong opinion about something we’ve reported, write us! We’ll happily read your submissions.

To share your letters for publishing consideration, email your thoughts to opinion@psuvanguard. com with the heading LETTER TO THE EDITOR, followed by your subject line.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

The Vanguard Editorial Staff

PSU RUSSIAN CLUB SPEAKS ON LGBTQ+ ACTIVISM

STUDENT ORGANIZATION HOSTS EVENT DISCUSSING LGBTQ+ RIGHTS IN ST. PETERSBURG

ABBY JOBE

Portland State’s Russian Club, a student organization that meets to practice the Russian language and celebrate Slavic and Eastern European cultures, is working to further their education on social differences between the United States and Russian cities. On Friday, the club invited guest speaker Timofey Sozaev— Russian native, gay activist and co-founder of the St. Petersburg LGBTQ+ Organization—to talk about LGBTQ+ issues within Russia and specifically in St. Petersburg.

Historically there are similarities between Portland’s methods of activism and those in St. Petersburg, but while across the U.S. states have progressed in their policies, Russian politics have oppressed the LGBTQ+ community.

Sozaev, who is vying for activism and gay liberation in St. Petersburg, shared that historically Russia has gone back and forth between liberation of LGBTQ+ individuals and

conservatism. “Since February of 2021, there has been a wave of repression over all civil organizations, including those that advocate for LGBT individuals,” he said.

These aspects of repression include cutting off financing for civil projects, arresting protestors and removing books that discuss sexuality and gender from libraries.

According to travelportland.com, not only is Portland seen as a largely safe and accepting place, but based on population percentage it maintains one of the five largest LGBTQ+ communities in the U.S. Portland has opened many doors to its nearly 100,000 self-identified LGBTQ+ members by means of mental health resources, arts and culture events and safe spaces like the Q Center.

According to Sozaec, in St. Petersburg citizens focus on liberation by means of political involvement, social projects and pushing the medical field to refrain from referring to

homosexuality as a disease as it had still been in the mid-to-late 1900s. Citizens found, however, that the harder they pushed for liberation, the harder the pushback against them was.

In Portland, where there are many resources readily available for individuals seeking community or a safe space, it can be hard to comprehend how other countries do not have these opportunities. Social issues differ from country to country and even from region to region within a country.

“In 2017 there were physical attacks against LGBT people who lived in regions that were within the Russian Federation, even though there was no law against homosexuality,” Sozaev said. There was a change in the law, however, between 2017 and 2020. In 2020 the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, became more firm on demanding that marriage stay between a man and a woman, persecuting those who participate in gay activism and

relationships, and instilling traditional values among citizens.

Aviva Zelkind, a member of the Russian Club, had their own view on the subject of social differences. “It is important to observe the viewpoints of those in other countries so we can learn how to better our own systems,” they said. Zelkind is also an advocate for diversity and believes that the best way to make change is by discussing these issues and not being offended by other points of view, since everyone thinks differently.

While there are still individuals who are against LGBTQ+ rights and expression in Portland, they are not repressed in the same way as expressive members of the community in St. Petersburg. Sozaev shared that he was arrested more than once in St. Petersburg for participating in what was considered gay propaganda, in which he wore a visible rainbow on his clothing. He states that law enforcement in St. Petersburg could decide

what they considered gay propaganda when they chose to and it was not limited to a specific list.

“Listening to [Sozaev’s] presentation helped me to put our own country into context,” said Logan McDowall, Russian Club member and linguistics major. “It raises awareness on the pros and cons of our country and how we can change.”

When asked about how St. Petersburg is handling their current issue with activism and how LGBTQ+ people are handling the newer installment of traditional values and persecution against LGBTQ+ individuals, Sozaev shared that it’s a loaded question and a heavy answer.

He said that last fall, Putin’s laws were updated and have been made even more demanding than previously. Now there is a complete ban of discussion about LGBTQ+ issues, more censorship around knowledge which includes the banning of websites and even further

removal of what is considered gay propaganda.

Sozaev expressed his concern for others still in St. Petersburg, because many people are unable to leave the country and are also unable to raise awareness regarding LGBTQ+ issues and movements because they put themselves at risk of being fined or being placed under an administrative code.

Sozaev said that if a person was placed under an administrative code initially and then once again participated in a pro-LGBTQ+ situation or propaganda, they would be put under a criminal code, which is much more serious.

“Learning about these [social differences in Russia] has helped me to learn that there are shared identities between people in America and other countries,” said Maddie Engler, a PSU student who is passionate about LGBTQ+ activism. “It gives us [an] opportunity to strive for social change.”

CASEY LITCHFIELD

MAKING PARKING AND STREETS MORE GREEN

CITY OF PORTLAND’S TRANSPORTATION BUREAU TESTS NEW PILOT PROGRAM

PIPPA MACEY

The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) is on a mission to lessen urban heat over sunny seasons and to provide green stormwater management during the rainy months. Their proposed solution? To substitute street curb zones with trees.

The project aims to support the broader habitability of neighborhoods in Portland. “This program is the attempt by the city to explore the feasibility of adding street trees within the public street space in areas where we have inadequate tree canopy,” said Dylan Rivera, PBOT’s Public Information Officer. “We think this will support the livability of Portland neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods that are underserved historically by transportation and by the tree canopy that so many other parts of Portland have come to enjoy for many generations. And in addition, there’s concerns about climate change and impacts of the lack of canopy and potential benefits of expanding the city’s tree canopy, so this is an attempt to really expand the tree canopy in a way that we’ve not been able to do at any significant scale in the past because of the constraints of a dense urban environment.”

With $500,000 worth of grant money won from the Bureau of Environmental Service’s Percent for Green program, and in collaboration with the Bureau of Environmental Services and Portland Parks and Recreation’s Urban Forestry team, PBOT has an ambitious target of wrapping this pilot project up in two years.

“I’m working really closely with [Urban Forestry], and they’ll be the ones selecting tree species and helping us make sure we have the right tree for the right spot,” said Gena Gastaldi, PBOT’s Interim Pedestrian Coordinator.

There have been some challenges during planning—one of them being the fact that Portland is not just congested above ground, but below ground as well.

“The ‘right of way’ is a very busy place,” Rivera said. “A street may look sometimes empty…but below the surface is a manylayered cake of infrastructure of height and powerlines and gas lines and utilities that are serving that neighborhood on a daily basis and going unseen, so that’s part of a major challenge that we face with this.”

This project has not been attempted in other cities, although there are some examples of it on SE Hawthorne & 46th and in Director Park, both of which were designed without the intention to be replicated. “What we’re trying to do with this pilot project is not only have a really successful corridor that we’ve done this on, but we also want something that can be replicated in other parts of the city,” Gastaldi said. “And when you look at streets that have a sidewalk with no space to put a tree… we can’t just go and cut into that sidewalk and plant a tree because the sidewalk is already so narrow, so we either need to move the curb out or literally cut into the street and… plant a tree in the street.”

During the Pedestrian Design Guide process, the community expressed an urgent need for reallocating street space. Gastaldi said the project was greeted with enthusiasm. “I have been at PBOT for three years and I have never gotten more emails about one project than this one,” Gastaldi said. “People are excited…I think for folks to see that we took that feedback really to heart and have been behind the scenes working on this, and that not only did we put it in a plan

but then, you know, we went and found money and are now implementing that project and that idea, I think people are excited about that.”

With as much excitement as there is for this project, there are still many considerations to be had when choosing the right spots for implementation. “What we’re looking at doing is reallocating some of the on-street parking on a street and creating that space where instead of one car parking space, you now have a tree bumped out space,” Gastaldi said. “This is not happening all over the city. People have already asked me ‘can I sign up for one?’ No. This is a pilot, this is the first time we’ve done something like this. We’re being really careful and calculated, and using the data to tell us where this needs to go.”

Further data can be found in the Pedestrian Advisory Committee Presentation, which includes the criteria to meet for tree planting, the Urban Forestry tree planting standards and upcoming projects.

“We looked at streets that have curb-type sidewalks, so sidewalks where there’s no place to put a tree even if you wanted to—that was a big criteria, streets that have on-street parking that we can remove,” Gastaldi said. “What are the hottest streets and the streets that need this the most? That took us to east Portland and lower southeast.”

When asked about considerations for the availability of parking spots, Gastaldi said the project was planned with those concerns in mind. “We…worked with our traffic engineers to look at vehicle speeds, vehicle volumes and parking utilizations—so how much of the parking actually used, because we don’t wanna put this in a place where we’re gonna get a ton of pushback,” Gastaldi said. “There’s a ton of businesses and they need that parking— we wanna put this on a low-volume, kind of slower street where the parking utilization, the amount of parking is used, is relatively low.”

HANNA OBERLANDER

PORTLAND CENTER STAGE PRESENTS MS. HOLMES AND MS. WATSON

KAT LEON

The game is afoot here in Portland, Oregon, with Portland Center Stage’s newest theater production Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson Playing at The Armory until Feb. 12, the classic story of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson is told with a modern twist and female leads. Many in the audience might recognize many of the main characters and major plot points. “I think in terms of familiarity, just characters, you have Watson and Homes—you have Mrs. Hudson, so there’s definitely a cast of familiar characters,” said Kimberly Chatterjee, who plays Dr. Joan Watson. “If you’re familiar with any of the stories, they might be presented in slightly different ways, but you know who they are and what their archetypes are. The nature of just the mysteries unfolding and Sherlock always being ten steps ahead. That’s absolutely true in this production.”

Every cast member was incredibly talented, and the lead, Ashley Song, makes an incredible Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock is a complex character, written with the manic energy that playwright Kate Hamill imbued. Maintaining that energy level without breaking character for the show’s duration takes an actor with

incredible talent, and Ashley Song met that bar and far exceeded it.

As her co-lead, Chatterjee said, “There are a million props, a million sections, that has to be said at the speed of light… It’s not that they have to be. That’s how they land the best. And it’s also what makes it so fun. Doing it at the speed of fun—the speed of play. But it also is what makes it really hard.”

Song’s dedication to the character and her energy, combined with her seamless interactions with the props, is awe-inspiring. If Song had any opening day jitters, there was no evidence. Her performance was utterly flawless.

Additionally, the set added an element to this show that would not exist without it. In a way, the set is its own character, as the intricacy and detail put into the set design is so complicated that even though one might stare at it for the

duration of the show, details can be easily missed and intricacy noted if rewatched. The set was incredibly detailed but not haphazard. Everything seemingly had a meaning and a purpose. The set almost seemed like a personification of Sherlock’s mind—complex, intricate and intentional.

While Song was incredibly talented, so was every one of her co-stars. Darius Pierce, who plays Lestrade primarily, has an incredible stage presence. He commanded the stage every time he stepped onto it in ways that were appropriate to the character he was playing. Dana Green played multiple characters, primarily Irene Adler and Mrs. Hudson. Each role Green played was very different from the next, and she flowed seamlessly from mousy to villainous to dead, showing her impressive range and talent as an actor.

Then there is Dr. Watson, played by Chatterjee, who was perhaps the most crucial character. “Watson as a character, I think, is so important,” Song said. “She gets to be there to serve as this person following along with the audience and experiencing this sort of larger-than-life, preposterous dynamic that is

DANA GREEN AS IRENE ADLER AND ASHLEY SONG AS SHERLOCK HOLMES IN MS. HOLMES & MS. WATSON. COURTESY OF PORTLAND CENTER STAGE

PROMOTION POSTER. COURTESY OF PORTLAND CENTER STAGE

created by Sherlock and the other characters in the story.”

Dr. Watson is the audience’s way into this story. She acts as a bridge between this insane, at times nonsensical world and the audience.

Dr. Watson’s empathy is a meaningful cornerstone of her character and serves as a way for the audience to connect to this show’s more profound truths.

While Song kept the laughter rolling and played an important role in this murder comedy show, Chatterjee allowed for a beautiful convergence of reality, empathy and truth to shine through a beacon for the audience to navigate this nonsensical world.

While gender-bending is not the only difference in this newest addition to the Sherlock universe, it is consequential. Historically and currently, theater again and again plays into men playing women as a comedy routine. “I think that when men play women, it’s playing on the tropes that are assigned to women,” Song said. “When I think about Monty Python and

those guys playing women, they’re making fun of women when they do that.”

Some might argue that this is the same in reverse, but an important distinction needs to be pointed out. “There is a certain element of masculine energy to this version of Sherlock, but I don’t really feel like she is making fun of men,” Song said. “I think that she’s making fun of this idea of genius and anachronism. I think that’s what makes it a feminist story is that it’s not an attack on gender. It’s an investigation of fems in funny lead roles and of this collective worship of super-geniuses and over-the-top narratives.”

The mocking of anachronism is what we need to flip this old-worn narrative in theater that mocking a community of people is funny. Theater often seems stuck and rooted in oldfashioned ideas. While it has improved, there are still so many problematic ideals that are upheld in theater. It might be an unfortunate truth that if it does not advance, then it will cease to exist, leading to generations of people not being able to enjoy this complex emotional

experience. “There’s something, I think, very human about showing the highest highs and the lowest lows, as a community event,” Chatterjee said. “Something cathartic about that. It feels very human and very ancient that people need to gather and share in the community.” Living in a world without that because it resisted the tides of change would be incredibly disappointing.

This show seeks to move against that grain in theater in more ways than one. “I really do hope that people come away being—wow, women are super funny, and they can totally carry a show,” Song said. “And also like, Asian American women are funny and can carry a show. I have been actively working against the model minority complex my whole life. And I think it’s nice to be able to twist that on its head a little bit, and not to say that Sherlock is obviously a very brilliant person, but she also behaves in a way that I was never allowed to act out like that when I was growing up. It was seen as really inappropriate, not just because I was a woman but also because I am an Asian woman,

and that’s just not what’s expected of us.”

This show consistently subverts expectations and pokes fun at those who see it as untrue to theater and what it is supposedly meant to be. As Song pointed out, we have seen classic canon portray Sherlock as a white man over and over. In many ways, we see theater do the same, highlighting the white male voice above all and using that privileged voice to mock other less privileged communities. Shows such as Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson are critical to the survival of the theater world and the vital sense of community that comes from interacting with human emotion in this way.

“So I hope it’s both really funny and people get to just have a great enjoyable evening,” Chatterjee said. “We’ve all been through a world-scale trauma over the past three years. We need each other more than ever. Even if that’s really hard, even if that’s scary, so that is it, I want you to laugh when we fall down on our butts, and I also want you to hold your friends a little closer.”

KIMBERLY CHATTERJEE AS DR. JOAN WATSON AND ASHLEY SONG AS SHERLOCK HOLMES IN MS. HOLMES & MS. WATSON. COURTESY OF PORTLAND CENTER STAGE

ASHLEY SONG AS SHERLOCK HOLMES, DANA GREEN AS DEAD MAN AND KIMBERLY CHATTERJEE AS DR. JOAN WATSON IN MS. HOLMES & MS. WATSON. COURTESY OF PORTLAND CENTER STAGE

ASHLEY SONG AS SHERLOCK HOLMES, AND KIMBERLY CHATTERJEE AS DR. JOAN WATSON IN MS. HOLMES & MS. WATSON PROMOTION PHOTO. COURTESY OF PORTLAND CENTER STAGE

The electric car market is booming in Oregon. Drivers in the state have ranked number two in the United States in EV sales for two years straight, tying in 2022 with Hawaii and Washington, according to OPB. But we shouldn’t let the positive glow of automobile electrification distract from the real issue: cars themselves. If we want a more sustainable, healthier future, we must reduce car usership altogether in favor of person-centric infrastructure.

Electric vehicles certainly help in the fight against climate change, at least when compared side-by-side to a gas-powered car. According to the Oregon Department of Energy 2020 Biennial Energy Report, Oregon’s transportation sector makes up 40% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, with 95.4% of those coming from vehicles powered by gasoline and diesel. “For electric vehicle drivers,” the report states, “no matter where a car is fueled in Oregon, drivers are reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 95 percent by fueling with electricity.”

However, greenhouse gas emissions are not the only criteria by which we should judge electric vehicles. An article in the Jan. 2022 issue of the journal Cities titled “Revisiting car dependency: A worldwide analysis of car travel in global metropolitan areas” breaks down the issues with car dependency. The authors note that 86% of personal trips in U.S. cities are made by car, and such reliance on personal vehicles causes a slew of negative effects. Cars contribute to climate change, air pollution, traffic congestion, noise pollution and crashes. Switching to electric vehicles only addresses the first two, while leaving the rest virtually unchanged.

What are the costs of car use? In U.S. traffic alone, private vehicles on urban roads lose a total of 3.7 billion hours to congestion annually, exacerbated by a lack of infrastructure or alternative transportation options. Road traffic produces 90% of noise pollution, worst in highly populated cities like Beijing or Barcelona. Finally, each year, more than 1.2 million people are killed around the world in road accidents, and more than 50 million are non-fatally injured.

Car dependency doesn’t just affect how we live in the city, it changes the city itself. The widespread adoption of automobiles post-World War II, according to the Automobile in American Life and Society project from the University of Michigan, facilitated the growth of urban sprawl throughout the 20th century. Before anyone knew what was happening, professor Martin V. Melosi states, cars had begun to break the ties

that bind urban communities together: “Motor vehicles disperse populations almost randomly, and roads and highways become the essential common links between people and their homes, their jobs, and their diversions.”

Simply put, car-centered urban planning makes it harder to maintain a sense of community. Public health researcher Mateusz Borowieki stated to Vox that carcentric neighborhoods and suburbs reduce opportunities for social interaction across all age groups—children have fewer ways to get around on their own, working-age adults often commute alone from home to highway to parking lot and older adults have few opportunities to leave the house without a car.

While it isn’t a panacea, smarter, peoplecentric urban planning can help ameliorate many of these problems. An April 2022 study in Sustainability, “The Compactness

TESLA CHARGING AT AN EV STATION IN A PARKING GARAGE IN DOWNTOWN PORTLAND. ALBERTO ALONSO PUJAZON BOGANI/PSU VANGUARD

of Non-Compacted Urban Developments: A Critical Review on Sustainable Approaches to Automobility and Urban Sprawl,” lays out a number of proposed solutions to car-dependent city planning. These are the “compact city,” the “free-carbon city” and the “ubiquitous eco-city.”

The compact city is exactly what it sounds like: the idea is to fight against urban sprawl by shrinking the city inward, raising urban density, reducing the distance of car trips and in the process making for a more pedestrianfriendly environment. The free-carbon city aims to mitigate carbon emissions by encouraging the use of electric vehicles in underground rapid transit tunnels, à la Elon Musk’s Boring Company

The most exciting option, however, is the eco-city. So-called “ubiquitous” because of its emphasis on communications technology, the eco-city prioritizes the use of digital technologies

like Zoom and FaceTime to reduce business commutes; as well as public bikes, scooters and other forms of alternative transportation with smart-tracking systems, like Portland’s Lime scooters and BIKETOWN bicycles.

Such interventions, along with improved public transit infrastructure, have the potential to fundamentally reshape our urban environments for the better—to refocus our communities in a happier, healthier, friendlier direction. Car-centric infrastructure takes valuable public spaces away from potential greenspaces and pedestrian plazas, which are essential for urban quality of life

Though electric cars may help reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, in the final analysis they only further entrench car dependency. At the end of the day, a car is a car is a car—a Tesla takes up just as much parking space as a Subaru.

ELECTRIC

SPRAWL

DEFUSING TENSIONS ON TRIMET

In recent years, TriMet has seen increasing violence towards both operators and riders alike. This is due to many factors, but one of them is the mental health of transit riders. TriMet needs to create policies and training for their staff on how to defuse this kind of violence quickly and peacefully.

Attacks on TriMet drivers are common: one example is former driver Richard Williams, who “says he was assaulted during his four years working for the transit agency and was never told if the suspect was arrested,” reported Brandon Thompson of Koin 6 News. “He says drivers are the first people to interact with someone having a mental break. Most drivers don’t know how to handle it. It can get very confrontational very quick and it can get very physical and dangerous very fast.”

In order to deal with incidents like these, one thing TriMet plans to do is to hire more security officers. This is because “transit officers, historically, have been the security on the TriMet system, using 18 deputies from the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office,” Thompson reported. “TriMet said they would like to have 65.” Yet this is a step in the wrong direction—it would make TriMet more militant by adding more and more officers on trains, buses and streetcars. Meeting violence with violence will only perpetuate a cycle of militarization.

TriMet needs to handle this issue in a more peaceful way— the city should offer more programs and resources for those who may have mental issues. Riders who attack drivers or other riders due to mental illness are people too—they are sick and deserve our assistance.

One program that TriMet could work with is LifeWorks NW, which “has been providing compassionate, effective, and culturally responsive mental health services throughout Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties,” according to their website . LifeWorks NW’s mental health programs include inpatient and outpatient services, as well as therapy and counseling for both individuals and family groups. They also provide evidence-based practices and a team-based approach to clients of every age.

Another such organization is NAMI Oregon. This organization would be a great help, because “NAMI Oregon is an independent, grassroots organization, one of 50 state organizations that comprise the National Alliance on Mental Illness,” as their website says. Their mission is to “improve the lives of individuals with mental health problems and their families through education and advocacy.”

On top of this, TriMet needs to train operators on how to calm a rider in distress. TriMet is currently working alongside

local organizations to provide training on multiple potential problems that may arise on TriMet vehicles, focusing on topics such as anti-racism, cultural competency, mental health and deescalation techniques. In March of last year, TriMet stated that they “issued a request for proposals for training for our frontline staff and system partners. Proposals are due March 25.” Yet we need change now, not in March—TriMet ought to speed up the timeline to get training to officers who need help right now.

TriMet should not only provide training for their operators, but for their riders as well. This might be accomplished through a public awareness campaign—for example, TriMet could put up posters on transit vehicles that explain how to defuse a situation where there may be violence on the train, street car or bus. This would be a big help to de-escalate a tense situation on TriMet, because giving riders the knowledge of how to do so would act as a stopgap when the operator may not be successful in defusing a situation.

If TriMet invested in more community outreach and deescalation training, we could have a safer and more welcoming transit system. Militarizing a public service as the first resort can only end in disaster. We should hope that TriMet leaders see the wisdom in a peaceful response, and do not try to perpetuate a system of order enforced by violence.

IAN MCMEEKAN

TRIMET MAX STATION AT PIONEER SQUARE NORTH. ALBERTO ALONSO PUJAZON BOGANI/PSU VANGUARD